The Ego and His Own Part 28

Calling--destiny--task!--

What one can become he does become. A born poet may well be hindered by the disfavor of circ.u.mstances from standing on the high level of his time, and, after the great studies that are indispensable for this, producing _consummate_ works of art; but he will make poetry, be he a plowman or so lucky as to live at the court of Weimar. A born musician will make music, no matter whether on all instruments or only on an oaten pipe. A born philosophical head can give proof of itself as university philosopher or as village philosopher. Finally, a born dolt, who, as is very well compatible with this, may at the same time be a sly-boots, will (as probably every one who has visited schools is in a position to exemplify to himself by many instances of fellow-scholars) always remain a blockhead, let him have been drilled and trained into the chief of a bureau, or let him serve that same chief as bootblack.

Nay, the born shallow-pates indisputably form the most numerous cla.s.s of men. And why, indeed, should not the same distinctions show themselves in the human species that are unmistakable in every species of beasts?

The more gifted and the less gifted are to be found everywhere.

Only a few, however, are so imbecile that one could not get ideas into them. Hence people usually consider all men capable of having religion.

In a certain degree they may be trained to other ideas too, _e. g._ to some musical intelligence, even some philosophy, etc. At this point then the priesthood of religion, of morality, of culture, of science, etc., takes its start, and the Communists, _e. g._, want to make everything accessible to all by their "public school." There is heard a common a.s.sertion that this "great ma.s.s" cannot get along without religion; the Communists broaden it into the proposition that not only the "great ma.s.s," but absolutely all, are called to everything.

Not enough that the great ma.s.s has been trained to religion, now it is actually to have to occupy itself with "everything human." Training is growing ever more general and more comprehensive.

You poor beings who could live so happily if you might skip according to your mind, you are to dance to the pipe of schoolmasters and bear-leaders, in order to perform tricks that you yourselves would never use yourselves for. And you do not even kick out of the traces at last against being always taken otherwise than you want to give yourselves.

No, you mechanically recite to yourselves the question that is recited to you: "What am I called to? What _ought_ I to do?" You need only ask thus, to have yourselves _told_ what you ought to do and _ordered_ to do it, to have your _calling_ marked out for you, or else to order yourselves and impose it on yourselves according to the spirit's prescription. Then in reference to the will the word is, I will to do what I _ought_.

A man is "called" to nothing, and has no "calling," no "destiny," as little as a plant or a beast has a "calling." The flower does not follow the calling to complete itself, but it spends all its forces to enjoy and consume the world as well as it can,--_i. e._ it sucks in as much of the juices of the earth, as much air of the ether, as much light of the sun, as it can get and lodge. The bird lives up to no calling, but it uses its forces as much as is practicable; it catches beetles and sings to its heart's delight. But the forces of the flower and the bird are slight in comparison to those of a man, and a man who applies his forces will affect the world much more powerfully than flower and beast. A calling he has not, but he has forces that manifest themselves where they are because their being consists solely in their manifestation, and are as little able to abide inactive as life, which, if it "stood still"

only a second, would no longer be life. Now, one might call out to the man, "use your force." Yet to this imperative would be given the meaning that it was man's task to use his force. It is not so. Rather, each one really uses his force without first looking upon this as his calling: at all times every one uses as much force as he possesses. One does say of a beaten man that he ought to have exerted his force more; but one forgets that, if in the moment of succ.u.mbing he had had the force to exert his forces (_e. g._ bodily forces), he would not have failed to do it: even if it was only the discouragement of a minute, this was yet a--dest.i.tution of force, a minute long. Forces may a.s.suredly be sharpened and redoubled, especially by hostile resistance or friendly a.s.sistance; but where one misses their application one may be sure of their absence too. One can strike fire out of a stone, but without the blow none comes out; in like manner a man too needs "impact."

Now, for this reason that forces always of themselves show themselves operative, the command to use them would be superfluous and senseless.

To use his forces is not man's _calling_ and task, but is his _act_, real and extant at all times. Force is only a simpler word for manifestation of force.

Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a "true man" from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a "true man," the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the "man."

The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous and suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.

But, if I am Man, and have really found in myself him whom religious humanity designated as the distant goal, then everything "truly human"

is also _my own_. What was ascribed to the idea of humanity belongs to me. That freedom of trade, _e. g._, which humanity has yet to attain,--and which, like an enchanting dream, people remove to humanity's golden future,--I take by antic.i.p.ation as my property, and carry it on for the time in the form of smuggling. There may indeed be but few smugglers who have sufficient understanding to thus account to themselves for their doings, but the instinct of egoism replaces their consciousness. Above I have shown the same thing about freedom of the press.

Everything is my own, therefore I bring back to myself what wants to withdraw from me; but above all I always bring myself back when I have slipped away from myself to any tributariness. But this too is not my calling, but my natural act.

Enough, there is a mighty difference whether I make myself the starting-point or the goal. As the latter I do not have myself, am consequently still alien to myself, am my _essence_, my "true essence,"

and this "true essence," alien to me, will mock me as a spook of a thousand different names. Because I am not yet I, another (like G.o.d, the true man, the truly pious man, the rational man, the freeman, etc.) is I, my ego.

Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, "The spirit is man's proper essence," or, "man exists as man only spiritually." Now there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged _himself_; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.

And, as one stormily pursues his own self, the never-attained, so one also despises shrewd people's rule to take men as they are, and prefers to take them as they should be; and, for this reason, hounds every one on after his should-be self and "endeavors to make all into equally ent.i.tled, equally respectable, equally moral or rational men."[219]

Yes, "if men were what they _should_ be, _could_ be, if all men were rational, all loved each other as brothers," then it would be a paradisiacal life.[220]--All right, men are as they should be, can be.

What should they be? Surely not more than they can be! And what can they be? Not more, again, than they--can, _i. e._ than they have the competence, the force, to be. But this they really are, because what they are not they are _incapable_ of being; for to be capable means--really to be. One is not capable for anything that one really is not; one is not capable of anything that one does not really do. Could a man blinded by cataract see? Oh, yes, if he had his cataract successfully removed. But now he cannot see because he does not see.

Possibility and reality always coincide. One can do nothing that one does not, as one does nothing that one cannot.

The singularity of this a.s.sertion vanishes when one reflects that the words "it is possible that ..." almost never contain another meaning than "I can imagine that ...," _e. g._, It is possible for all men to live rationally, _i. e._ I can imagine that all, etc. Now,--since my thinking cannot, and accordingly does not, cause all men to live rationally, but this must still be left to the men themselves,--general reason is for me only thinkable, a thinkableness, but as such in fact a _reality_ that is called a possibility only in reference to what I _can_ not bring to pa.s.s, to wit, the rationality of others. So far as depends on you, all men might be rational, for you have nothing against it; nay, so far as your thinking reaches, you perhaps cannot discover any hindrance either, and accordingly nothing does stand in the way of the thing in your thinking; it is thinkable to you.

As men are not all rational, though, it is probable that they--cannot be so.

If something which one imagines to be easily possible is not, or does not happen, then one may be a.s.sured that something stands in the way of the thing, and that it is--impossible. Our time has its art, science, etc.; the art may be bad in all conscience; but may one say that we deserved to have a better, and "could" have it if we only would? We have just as much art as we can have. Our art of to-day is the _only art possible_, and therefore real, at the time.

Even in the sense to which one might at last still reduce the word "possible," that it should mean "future," it retains the full force of the "real." If one says, _e. g._, "It is possible that the sun will rise to-morrow,"--this means only, "for to-day to-morrow is the real future"; for I suppose there is hardly need of the suggestion that a future is real "future" only when it has not yet appeared.

Yet wherefore this dignifying of a word? If the most prolific misunderstanding of thousands of years were not in ambush behind it, if this single concept of the little word "possible" were not haunted by all the spooks of possessed men, its contemplation should trouble us little here.

The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous _thinkableness_. It was _thinkable_ that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they _might_ be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was--so ran the inference--possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right here lies the deceptive point: because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to _men_), therefore they _ought_ to be so, it was their _calling_; and finally--one is to take men only according to this calling, only as _called_ men, "not as they are, but as they ought to be."

And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a _thought_, an _ideal_, to which the individual is related not even as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a--finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory (_in majorem humanitatis gloriam_) the individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in having done something for the "spirit of humanity."

Thus the _thinkers_ rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible must be realized. They _think_ an ideal of man, which for the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is really--thinkable, it is an--idea.

But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can _think_ that we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our Christianity is only _thinkable_, but in other respects _impossible_; if he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive _thoughts_, his "good belief," he would have to learn that we do not at all _need_ to become what we do not like to become.

And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, etc., are put before the eyes of men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?[221] No, reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism.

History hitherto is the history of the _intellectual_ man. After the period of sensuality, history proper begins; _i. e._, the period of intellectuality,[222] spirituality,[223] non-sensuality, supersensuality, nonsensicality. Man now begins to want to be and become _something_. What? Good, beautiful, true; more precisely, moral, pious, agreeable, etc. He wants to make of himself a "proper man," "something proper." _Man_ is his goal, his ought, his destiny, calling, task, his--_ideal_; he is to himself a future, otherworldly he. And _what_ makes a "proper fellow" of him? Being true, being good, being moral, and the like. Now he looks askance at every one who does not recognize the same "what," seek the same morality, have the same faith; he chases out "separatists, heretics, sects," etc.

No sheep, no dog, exerts itself to become a "proper sheep, a proper dog"; no beast has its essence appear to it as a task, _i. e._ as a concept that it has to realize. It realizes itself in living itself out, _i. e._ dissolving itself, pa.s.sing away. It does not ask to be or to become anything _other_ than it is.

Do I mean to advise you to be like the beasts? That you ought to become beasts is an exhortation which I certainly cannot give you, as that would again be a task, an ideal ("How doth the little busy bee improve each s.h.i.+ning hour.... In works of labor or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"). It would be the same, too, as if one wished for the beasts that they should become human beings. Your nature is, once for all, a human one; you are human natures, _i. e._ human beings. But, just because you already are so, you do not still need to become so. Beasts too are "trained," and a trained beast executes many unnatural things. But a trained dog is no better for itself than a natural one, and has no profit from it, even if it is more companionable for us.

Exertions to "form" all men into moral, rational, pious, human, etc., "beings" (_i. e._ training) were in vogue from of yore. They are wrecked against the indomitable quality of I, against own nature, against egoism. Those who are trained never attain their ideal, and only profess with their _mouth_ the sublime principles, or make a _profession_, a profession of faith. In face of this profession they must in _life_ "acknowledge themselves sinners altogether," and they fall short of their ideal, are "weak men," and bear with them the consciousness of "human weakness."

It is different if you do not chase after an _ideal_ as your "destiny,"

but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your "destiny," because it is present time.

Yet the _culture_, the religiousness, of men has a.s.suredly made them free, but only free from one lord, to lead them to another. I have learned by religion to tame my appet.i.te, I break the world's resistance by the cunning that is put in my hand by _science_; I even serve no man: "I am, no man's lackey." But then it comes, You must obey G.o.d more than man. Just so I am indeed free from irrational determination by my impulses, but obedient to the master _Reason_. I have gained "spiritual freedom," "freedom of the spirit." But with that _I_ have then become subject to that very _spirit_. The spirit gives me orders, reason guides me, they are my leaders and commanders. The "rational," the "servants of the spirit," rule. But, if _I_ am not flesh, I am in truth not spirit either. Freedom of the spirit is servitude of me, because I am more than spirit or flesh.

Without doubt culture has made me _powerful_. It has given me power over all _motives_, over the impulses of my nature as well as over the exactions and violences of the world. I know, and have gained the force for it by culture, that I need not let myself be coerced by any of my appet.i.tes, pleasures, emotions, etc.; I am their--_master_; in like manner I become, through the sciences and arts, the _master_ of the refractory world, whom sea and earth obey, and to whom even the stars must give an account of themselves. The spirit has made me _master_.--But I have no power over the spirit itself. From religion (culture) I do learn the means for the "vanquis.h.i.+ng of the world," but not how I am to subdue _G.o.d_ too and become master of him; for G.o.d "is the spirit." And this same spirit, of which I am unable to become master, may have the most manifold shapes: he may be called G.o.d or National Spirit, State, Family, Reason, also--Liberty, Humanity, Man.

_I_ receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it: _I_ have not lived in vain. The experience that I have _power_ over my nature, and need not be the slave of my appet.i.tes, shall not be lost to me; the experience that I can subdue the world by culture's means is too dear-bought for me to be able to forget it. But I want still more.

People ask, what can man do? what can he accomplish? what goods procure?

and put down the highest of everything as a calling. As if everything were possible to _me_!

If one sees somebody going to ruin in a mania, a pa.s.sion, etc. (_e. g._ in the huckster-spirit, in jealousy), the desire is stirred to deliver him out of this possession and to help him to "self-conquest." "We want to make a man of him!" That would be very fine if another possession were not immediately put in the place of the earlier one. But one frees from the love of money him who is a thrall to it, only to deliver him over to piety, humanity, or some principle else, and to transfer him to a _fixed standpoint_ anew.

This transference from a narrow standpoint to a sublime one is declared in the words that the sense must not be directed to the perishable, but to the imperishable alone: not to the temporal, but to the eternal, absolute, divine, purely human, etc.,--to the _spiritual_.

People very soon discerned that it was not indifferent what one set his affections on, or what one occupied himself with; they recognized the importance of the _object_. An object exalted above the individuality of things is the _essence_ of things; yes, the essence is alone the thinkable in them, it is for the _thinking_ man. Therefore direct no longer your _sense_ to the _things_, but your _thoughts_ to the _essence_. "Blessed are they who see not, and yet believe"; _i. e._, blessed are the _thinkers_ for they have to do with the invisible and believe in it. Yet even an object of thought, that const.i.tuted an essential point of contention centuries long, comes at last to the point of being "no longer worth speaking of." This was discerned, but nevertheless people always kept before their eyes again a self-valid importance of the object, an absolute value of it, as if the doll were not the most important thing to the child, the Koran to the Turk. As long as I am not the sole important thing to myself, it is indifferent of what object I "make much," and only my greater or lesser _delinquency_ against it is of value. The degree of my attachment and devotion marks the standpoint of my liability to service, the degree of my sinning shows the measure of my ownness.

But finally, and in general, one must know how to "put everything out of his mind," if only so as to be able to--go to sleep. Nothing may occupy us with which _we_ do not occupy ourselves: the victim of ambition cannot run away from his ambitious plans, nor the G.o.d-fearing man from the thought of G.o.d; infatuation and possessedness coincide.

To want to realize his essence or live conformably to his concept (which with believers in G.o.d signifies as much as to be "pious," and with believers in humanity means living "humanly") is what only the sensual and sinful man can propose to himself, the man so long as he has the anxious choice between happiness of sense and peace of soul, so long as he is a "poor sinner." The Christian is nothing but a sensual man who, knowing of the sacred and being conscious that he violates it, sees in himself a poor sinner: sensualness, recognized as "sinfulness," is Christian consciousness, is the Christian himself. And if "sin" and "sinfulness" are now no longer taken into the mouths of moderns, but, instead of that, "egoism," "self-seeking," "selfishness," and the like, engage them; if the devil has been translated into the "un-man" or "egoistic man,"--is the Christian less present then than before? Is not the old discord between good and evil,--is not a judge over us, man,--is not a calling, the calling to make oneself man--left? If they no longer name it calling, but "task" or, very likely, "duty," the change of name is quite correct, because "man" is not, like G.o.d, a personal being that can "call"; but outside the name the thing remains as of old.

Every one has a relation to objects, and more, every one is differently related to them. Let us choose as an example that book to which millions of men had a relation for two thousand years, the Bible. What is it, what was it, to each? Absolutely, only what he _made out of it_! For him who makes to himself nothing at all out of it, it is nothing at all; for him who uses it as an amulet, it has solely the value, the significance, of a means of sorcery; for him who, like children, plays with it, it is nothing but a plaything; etc.

Now, Christianity asks that it shall _be the same for all_: say, the sacred book or the "sacred Scriptures." This means as much as that the Christian's view shall also be that of other men, and that no one may be otherwise related to that object. And with this the ownness of the relation is destroyed, and one mind, one disposition, is fixed as the "_true_," the "only true" one. In the limitation of the freedom to make of the Bible what I will, the freedom of making in general is limited; and the coercion of a view or a judgment is put in its place. He who should pa.s.s the judgment that the Bible was a long error of mankind would judge--_criminally_.

In fact, the child who tears it to pieces or plays with it, the Inca Atahualpa who lays his ear to it and throws it away contemptuously when it remains dumb, judges just as correctly about the Bible as the priest who praises in it the "Word of G.o.d," or the critic who calls it a job of men's hands. For how we toss things about is the affair of our _option_, our _free will_: we use them according to our _heart's pleasure_, or, more clearly, we use them just as we _can_. Why, what do the parsons scream about when they see how Hegel and the speculative theologians make speculative thoughts out of the contents of the Bible? Precisely this, that they deal with it according to their heart's pleasure, or "proceed arbitrarily with it."

But, because we all show ourselves arbitrary in the handling of objects, _i. e._ do with them as we _like_ best, at our _liking_ (the philosopher likes nothing so well as when he can trace out an "idea" in everything, as the G.o.d-fearing man likes to make G.o.d his friend by everything, and so, _e. g._, by keeping the Bible sacred), therefore we nowhere meet such grievous arbitrariness, such a frightful tendency to violence, such stupid coercion, as in this very domain of our--_own free will_. If _we_ proceed arbitrarily in taking the sacred objects thus or so, how is it then that we want to take it ill of the parson-spirits if they take us just as arbitrarily _in their fas.h.i.+on_, and esteem us worthy of the heretic's fire or of another punishment, perhaps of the--censors.h.i.+p?